Industry News

8/27/2014

Robert Berkowitz was picked as the new director of technology for South Washington County Schools. He’s worked in the technology department since 2012 and was manager of systems and networks during the rollout of the district’s new technology initiative.

The board of Prospect's Region 16 hired Matthew Brennan as the district's new director of technology. He was previously the technology coordinator for Litchfield's public schools. Brennan will replace Bruce Bartmess, who has officially retired.

New York City reached a nearly $68 million contract agreement with the school safety agents union to give agents 10 percent raises over the course of a new, 7-year contract. In addition, the union's school safety agents will receive about $38 million in retroactive pay to settle a federal class-action pay discrimination lawsuit filed by the agents — two-thirds of whom are women.

Engineers have finished inspecting 30 schools in Napa and found the quake did not cause any structural damage. Teams of architects and engineers have been examining all of Napa's schools looking for any structural damage following Sunday morning's earthquake.

Children who spend more than four hours a day on their mobile phone perform significantly worse on school tests than those who are limited to just 30 minutes, a Japanese government survey has found. Grade scores suffered an average 14 percentage points across all subjects while the deficit rose to over 18 points in mathematics.

Developed in partnership with Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), Achieve3000 released Informed Learning Paths, built using results from NWEA's Measures of Academic Progress assessment. These new computer adaptive assessments will enable teachers to provide each student with a customized set of lessons.

Plenty of plagiarism is intentional. Many of the matches anti-plagarism software finds come from paper mills, cheat sites and other students' papers. As plagiarism-detecting technology improves, some students intent on cheating will find ways to outsmart it. But with anti-plagarism software companies adding hundreds of thousands of student papers a day, intentional plagiarism is riskier than ever.

Despite the school’s financial woes, a Philadelphia judge has ruled that Girard College may not drop its high school and boarding programs. The board that oversees the 165-year-old school says the decision threatens its financial stability.

Milton Friedman's article, "Selling School like Groceries," asked readers to consider a scenario in which grocery stores operated under the same provisions as public elementary and secondary schools. The feasibility of a system that enables one to give as much thought to selecting a child's school as one does with groceries needs to examined.

If speed cameras in school zones - and warnings of cameras -- slow down drivers, that's a win for public safety. But it also means the cameras won't generate much revenue, because speeding will decline. If the cameras create a ton of revenue because no one slows down, that means plenty of cash, but it also means the cameras aren't keeping people from speeding.

Panorama Education is partnering with Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education to launch Panorama Student Survey as a free, open source product. Panorama Education will offer the survey free for new and existing school, school district and state education department customers.

8/26/2014

The East Jordan Public Schools Board of Education named Matt Stevenson, the district's former middle school principal, as its new superintendent. The announcement comes after former superintendent, Jon Hoover, retired this summer.